Jr: On Advertising Lack of Originality

Names are funny things. We all have a couple. They are given to us before any personality is discernable. But somehow they imprint our lives.

As names go the ones that end in Jr., III, IV... are a bit strange. Why do parents need to advertise that they could not think of a new name for their child? Think of Martin Luther King Jr. we all know that his dad had the same name and his

grandparents basically just plagiarized a name.

Funnily enough parent forget to create names for boys more often than for girls. Rarely do we see a Anne III Even Queen Elizabeth is just technically Elizabeth Jr. Yet, independent of the gender the advertising goes on.

What I find most ridiculous is that we all fall prey of this ad campaign for someone's lack of originality. Millions of us are obliged to write down evidence that someone forgot to invent a name for the child. That when asked "Have you thought of the baby's name?" replied "You know what, we forgot, please just use mine that should work out and please let everyone know".

PS: Even with Popes, it had to be the Latin guy who comes and invent a new name instead of choosing John as default the way 23 of them did before!